Auguste Rodin's Head of Bibi and the Birth of Modern Sculpture

On this day, November 12, in 1840, the father of modern sculpture, Auguste Rodin (d. 1917) was born. Classically trained, Rodin didn’t set out to buck sculpture tradition but so he did through realist portrayals of individuals marked by unique physiognomy and character, as opposed to the uniformly lovely allegorical and mythological figures dominant at the time. The original casting above of Rodin’s famed bronze Mask of the Man with the Broken Nose is a prime example of his revolutionary style, for which he received much criticism at the time. According to the Rodin Museum, Rodin chose to model this sculpture on a local workman, Bibi, due to “his clear-cut facial features and broken nose.” In Rodin’s (and posterity’s) estimation, the roughness of the model’s face is what gives the sculpture its beauty, imbuing it with “a dignity reminiscent of classical sculpture.” Rodin considered this head his first good piece of modeling, which “determined all [his] future work.” To learn more about this piece, contact Alskom Art Gallery.